1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems for automatically capturing data relating to the removal of undesired constituents from volatile gases and, in particular, concerns a system which automatically collects data relating to the removal of carbon from volatile gases, such as greenhouse gases, validates the data and then determines the quantity of gas destroyed and the resultant amount of gaseous carbon reduced.
2. Description of the Related Art
In this era of global warming, the reduction of greenhouse gases and, in particular, the reduction of carbon containing gas in the environment is highly desirable. To this end, many countries of the world have entered into the Kyoto Protocol which requires countries to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and, in particular, reduce the amount of gases that contain carbon. This will require that certain industries and facilities that produce carbon containing gases take steps to reduce the amount of carbon containing gas emissions that they are releasing into the atmosphere. In addition to the Kyoto Protocol, various national governments have also implemented or are contemplating implementing procedures whereby various industries are provided with incentives to reduce the greenhouse emissions and the emissions of carbon containing gases.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, it is contemplated that industries will be given credits for the quantifiable amount of carbon that they have removed from the atmosphere. It is believed that these carbon credits will ultimately be traded between industries and will assume monetary value. Similarly, the United States contemplates providing tax credits to industry for the amount of carbon containing gases that have been reduced or otherwise removed from the atmosphere. These regimes have made it desirable to be able to accurately determine the amount of carbon gases that have been removed from the atmosphere.
However, in some implementations, it is often very difficult to determine the amount of carbon that have been removed from the atmosphere. One particular example of such a difficult implementation involves landfills. Landfills typically include a considerable amount of organic material that is decomposing underground. Volatile carbon containing gases, such as methane, are often produced as a result of this decomposition process. If allowed simply to vent into the atmosphere, the amount of carbon contained in these gases can be substantial.
As a consequence, it is desirable to prevent as much of the carbon containing gases, such as methane, from landfills from venting into the atmosphere. Typically, landfills will have a plurality of wellheads that are positioned so as to capture the gases and the well heads are often linked together such that the gases are provided to one or more destruction devices. The destruction devices can, in the simplest implementation, be a furnace or flare that is lit which results in the volatile carbon containing gases burning thereby transforming a fraction of the gaseous carbon component into solid carbon which thereby removes it from the atmosphere.
As the decomposition process within a landfill is variable, it is often difficult to determine with a high level of certainty for any particular time interval the amount of volatile carbon gases that have been reduced. The constituent components of the volatile carbon gases will vary based upon the materials that are decomposing and the volume of the volatile carbon containing gases will also vary based upon a wide variety of factors. As a consequence, it is necessary to monitor the gas flow and constituent components of the gas flow as well as the performance of the device used to reduce the volatile carbon gases on a fairly frequent basis to make an assessment of the amount of carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere.
Consequently, the monitoring system for such variable carbon gas producing facilities, such as landfills, is necessarily complex and involves many highly sophisticated and sensitive sensors. As a result of the complexity of the sensing system, it is not uncommon that various components will render faulty readings from time to time. Given the variability of the amount of gases being produced and also being reduced, faulty components for a particular period of time can result in a substantial loss of data and an inability to determine the actual amount of carbon that had been removed out of the atmosphere during certain time periods.
Generally, when data necessary for the calculation of the amount of carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere is missing, approximations of the data are often manually made by individuals. However, this manual approximation is often done on an ad hoc basis which reduces the confidence in the accuracy of the reported amount of carbon that has been reduced out of the atmosphere. In systems where compensation is going to be provided for this data, this loss of accuracy and confidence in the data can have a significant effect on the willingness of people to give monetary amounts for credits given for claimed carbon reduction.
Specifically, without some type of a verifiable system that is able to determine or approximate the faulty data, the willingness of government agencies to provide tax credits for carbon removed or reduced is going to be lessened. Moreover, if credits are going to be exchanged on an open market, the underlying basis and method of determining the credits has to be sufficiently accurate and transparent so as to justify a level of confidence on the part of the participants in the market.
Based upon the foregoing, there is a need for a system that will monitor the amount of carbon reduced out of greenhouse gases in systems that are subject to high variability in the amount of gas flow and the gas component, such as in landfill-type systems. To this end, there is a need for a system which is able to correct for missing or faulty data in a manner that is transparent and allows for subsequent review to thereby increase the confidence that auditors and other interested parties will have in the resulting figures relating to the amount of carbon that has been reduced or removed from the atmosphere.